The Bloody Road to Death Read Online Free PDF

several times, but the bloody “Boar” stops it every time through the old boy net in Berlin. Ain’t life terrible?’He looks up at the heavens as if some help can be expected from there.
    ‘Have you ever realized how seldom you ever get what you wish for? Just when you’re having it good, suddenly down the kitchen stairs you go. Look at these hands.’He displays a pair of filthy, torn, calloused hands. ‘Before they were white and soft as a nun’s. Look at my boots. All the shit of the Balkans hanging on ’em. When I was with my general they were polished like mirrors.’He sighs and wipes away a quiet tear as he thinks of past grandeurs.
    ‘I wasn’t made for all this farting about with the infantry.’ He sighs again. ‘In the temple of my heart a great candle isburning for my general and our monocle, and I know he thinks of me when he kneels in his night uniform beside his hard cot and entrusts himself to the Supreme War Leader and prays Him to bless our war.’
    We have been marching for perhaps an hour when a machine-gun rattles at us from the cactus.
    ‘Run, run!’screams Skull, hysterically, running back along the narrow path.
    ‘Shut up you silly bastard!’scolds Porta, irritatedly, throwing a hand-grenade in the direction of the machine-gun fire. A hard, flat explosion and the gun goes silent. Almost immediately another begins to hammer behind us.
    Panic breaks out. A hand-grenade explodes in the middle of us, blowing off the legs of a
500
.
    Tiny holds on to a cactus. Bullets shred the fleshy leaves around him.
    I am down, pressed flat behind an anthill. Buffalo, some three hundred pounds of flesh, a steel-helmet and an Mpi, comes thundering down the path. His Mpi spits fire. There is a hellish row from the cactus. Buffalo’s wild roarings are part of it.
    ‘He’s gone off it,’ decides Porta, pressing himself closer to the ground.;
    A little later Buffalo appears from the cactus, dragging two blood-soaked bodies behind him.
    ‘What the hell set
you
off?’asks Porta, watching Buffalo in astonishment as he wipes his battle-knife on one of the bodies.
    ‘I got mad. That mad I could’ve cracked coconuts with me goddam arse,’ he shouts angrily. ‘Those partisan bastards’ve pissed on us long enough. They needed a couple of good German clouts alongside the ear.’
    We drink the coolant from one of the guns, a Maxim. It tastes terrible but it
is
water.
    The sun appears from behind the mountains, as we continue our march. Everything takes on a beautiful rose-red tint. We shiver. The nights are cold, but we still enjoy them. In an hour’s time it will be hot as an oven. We begin to snarl at one another. By noon we hate one another. The padre we hate most of all with his eternal telling of beads and praying:
    ‘God is with us! God will help us!’
    ‘Shut your face!’roars Heide, enraged. ‘God has forgotten us!’
    ‘God’s with the goddam Reds,’ puffs Buffalo, using a cactus leaf as a fan. He sweats twice as much as anybody else. Twice as much as anybody else. Twice he has tried to leave the grenade-thrower behind but the Old Man notices every time and sends him back for it.
    Two
5oo’s
lead the way with machetes. They are relieved every half-hour. It is hard work cutting a path through the cactus.
    At midday the Old Man orders a halt. The unit is completely worn out. One of the
500’s
dies in terrible convulsions. They find a tiny green snake in his boot. Porta kills it and throws it at Heide who is so shocked he falls in a faint. They think at first he has died of a heart attack but when he comes to himself there is more life in him than Porta fancies. Two men have to hold him whilst a third ties his hands.
    After an hour the Old Man orders us up, but progress is slow now. We cover no more than a few miles before sundown. Without a thought of eating we throw ourselves to the ground and drop into unconsciousness. We stay where we are for the whole of the following day. Darkness has